The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy Read Free Book Online Page B

ironical voice:
    â€œNo! I’m not in debt!”
    Old Jolyon saw that he was angry, and touched his hand. He had run a risk. It was worth it, however, and Jo had never been sulky with him. They drove on, without speaking again, to Stanhope Gate. Old Jolyon invited him in, but young Jolyon shook his head.
    â€œJune’s not here,” said his father hastily: “went off today on a visit. I suppose you know that she’s engaged to be married?”
    â€œAlready?” murmured young Jolyon.
    Old Jolyon stepped out, and, in paying the cab fare, for the first time in his life gave the driver a sovereign in mistake for a shilling.
    Placing the coin in his mouth, the cabman whipped his horse secretly on the underneath and hurried away.
    Old Jolyon turned the key softly in the lock, pushed open the door, and beckoned. His son saw him gravely hanging up his coat, with an expression on his face like that of a boy who intends to steal cherries.
    The door of the dining room was open, the gas turned low; a spirit-urn hissed on a tea tray, and close to it a cynical looking cat had fallen asleep on the dining table. Old Jolyon shoo’d her off at once. The incident was a relief to his feelings; he rattled his opera hat behind the animal.
    â€œShe’s got fleas,” he said, following her out of the room. Through the door in the hall leading to the basement he called “Hssst!” several times, as though assisting the cat’s departure, till by some strange coincidence the butler appeared below.
    â€œYou can go to bed, Parfitt,” said old Jolyon. “I will lock up and put out.”
    When he again entered the dining room the cat unfortunately preceded him, with her tail in the air, proclaiming that she had seen through this manouevre for suppressing the butler from the first. . . .
    A fatality had dogged old Jolyon’s domestic stratagems all his life.
    Young Jolyon could not help smiling. He was very well versed in irony, and everything that evening seemed to him ironical. The episode of the cat; the announcement of his own daughter’s engagement. So he had no more part or parcel in her than he had in the Puss! And the poetical justice of this appealed to him.
    â€œWhat is June like now?” he asked.
    â€œShe’s a little thing,” returned old Jolyon; “they say she’s like me, but that’s their folly. She’s more like your mother—the same eyes and hair.”
    â€œAh! and she is pretty?”
    Old Jolyon was too much of a Forsyte to praise anything freely; especially anything for which he had a genuine admiration.
    â€œNot bad looking—a regular Forsyte chin. It’ll be lonely here when she’s gone, Jo.”
    The look on his face again gave young Jolyon the shock he had felt on first seeing his father.
    â€œWhat will you do with yourself, Dad? I suppose she’s wrapped up in him?”
    â€œDo with myself?” repeated old Jolyon with an angry break in his voice. “It’ll be miserable work living here alone. I don’t know how it’s to end. I wish to goodness. . . .” He checked himself, and added: “The question is, what had I better do with this house?”
    Young Jolyon looked round the room. It was peculiarly vast and dreary, decorated with the enormous pictures of still life that he remembered as a boy—sleeping dogs with their noses resting on bunches of carrots, together with onions and grapes lying side by side in mild surprise. The house was a white elephant, but he could not conceive of his father living in a smaller place; and all the more did it all seem ironical.
    In his great chair with the book-rest sat old Jolyon, the figurehead of his family and class and creed, with his white head and dome-like forehead, the representative of moderation, and order, and love of property. As lonely an old man as there was in London.
    There he sat in the gloomy comfort of the room, a puppet in the